Lifeboat Foundation

Nature has an extraordinary knack for producing composite materials that are simultaneously light and strong, porous and rigid — like mollusk shells or bone. But producing such materials in a lab or factory — particularly using environmentally friendly materials and processes — is extremely challenging.

Researchers in the Soft Materials Laboratory in the School of Engineering turned to nature for a solution. They have pioneered a 3D printable ink that contains Sporosarcina pasteurii: a bacterium which, when exposed to a urea-containing solution, triggers a mineralization process that produces calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The upshot is that the researchers can use their ink — dubbed BactoInk — to 3D-print virtually any shape, which will then gradually mineralize over the course of a few days.

-This would be good for coral reefs.

Continue reading “3D printing with bacteria-loaded ink produces bone-like composites” »

Normal body temperature can vary from individual to individual. However, despite this variation, the average basal body temperature of humans has mysteriously dropped since the 1860s. A recent study points to the gut microbiome as a possible contributor to regulating body temperature, both in healthy individuals and during life-threatening infections.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers led by Robert Dickson, M.D., at the University of Michigan Medical School, utilized health records from patients admitted to the hospital with sepsis and conducted experiments on mice to investigate the relationship between the gut bacteria composition, temperature changes, and health outcomes.

Sepsis, the body’s response to a life-threatening infection, can cause drastic changes in body temperature, the trajectory of which is linked to mortality. Previous work has demonstrated that hospitalized patients with sepsis vary widely in their temperature responses, and this variation predicts their survival.

A new study suggests that we may be able to prevent chronic inflammation in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients in a totally new way, by manipulating their gut microbiomes — the unique collection of microbes that live in our digestive tracts and play an important role in our health.

“We are approaching the search for multiple sclerosis therapeutics from a new direction,” said lead researcher Andrea Merchak from the University of Virginia (UVA).

Chronic inflammation: The immune system fights infections and heals injuries by sending inflammatory cells to the site of the problem. This process, inflammation, can cause pain, swelling, or other side effects, but ultimately, it’s for the greater good.

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Continue reading “Epigenetic Test #4: What’s My Biological Age?” »

The pros and cons of moonlighting—taking up an extra job in addition to full-time employment—are hotly debated. But in biology, moonlighting is not uncommon, as individual proteins often perform multiple functions. For many years, scientists knew that the Unusual Floral Organ (UFO) protein seems to do some moonlighting.

Based on the protein’s structure, its role in plants is thought to target proteins for destruction. But it also works with the Leafy (LFY) protein to aid flower formation. A team of scientists from France has now shed light on how this protein performs two roles.

The human fingertip is an exquisitely sensitive instrument for perceiving objects in our environment via the sense of touch. A team of Chinese scientists has mimicked the underlying perceptual mechanism to create a bionic finger with an integrated tactile feedback system capable of poking at complex objects to map out details below the surface layer, according to a recent paper published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

“We were inspired by human fingers, which have the most sensitive tactile perception that we know of,” said co-author Jianyi Luo of Wuyi University. “For example, when we touch our own bodies with our fingers, we can sense not only the texture of our skin, but also the outline of the bone beneath it. This tactile technology opens up a non-optical way for the nondestructive testing of the human body and flexible electronics.”

According to the authors, previously developed artificial tactile sensors could only recognize and discriminate between external shapes, surface textures, and hardness. But they aren’t capable of sensing subsurface information about those materials. This usually requires optical technologies, such as CT scanning, PET scans, ultrasonic tomography (which scans the exterior of a material to reconstruct an image of its internal structure), or MRIs, for example. But all of these methods also have drawbacks. Similarly, optical profilometry is often used to measure the surface’s profile and finish, but it only works on transparent materials.

Substance use disorder (SUD) is an extremely difficult disorder to overcome, and many individuals with SUD return to regular use after repeated attempts to quit.

A return to regular drug use can be caused by the body’s physical dependence on the drug as well as experiences associated with prior drug use. Exactly how these drug associations are formed in the brain and how they trigger a return to drug use remain unclear.

“Individuals make long-lasting associations between the euphoric experience of the drug and the people, places and things associated with drug use,” said Christopher Cowan, Ph.D. professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and member of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Scientific Council.

A culture system allows the long-term expansion of human haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in vivo without the use of recombinant cytokines or albumin, with potential applications for clinical therapies involving HSCs.

Synthetic hydrogels were shown to provide an effective scaffold for neuronal tissue growth in areas of brain damage, providing a possible approach for brain tissue reconstruction.

While growing brains may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, a cross-disciplinary team of researchers at Hokkaido University have made a step in that direction. They used hydrogel materials, in combination with neural stem cells, to grow new brain tissue. This is important since, when tissue in our brain is damaged, the neuronal tissue does not have the same regenerative capacity as other parts of our body such as skin.

The first step for researchers was to develop a hydrogel material in which neural stem cells could survive. They found that a neutral gel made with equal parts positively and negatively charged monomers resulted in the best cell adhesion. Researchers then adjusted the ratios of crosslinker molecules to achieve a stiffness similar to that of brain tissue; pores were then created in the gel in which cells could be cultured.